


Dawning(Break of Day)

by DistantStorm



Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: Domestic Fluff, F/M, Fluff, Fluff without Plot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-03
Updated: 2018-12-03
Packaged: 2019-09-06 15:05:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16835014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DistantStorm/pseuds/DistantStorm
Summary: These days are rare. Suraya wakes up before her partner and coaxes him awake.(AKA, Hawthorne admiring Zavala in the morning.)





	Dawning(Break of Day)

These days are rare.

They shouldn’t be, considering how often he returns late into the night, sometimes so late that the sun is beginning it’s trek into the sky, the light of dawn warming the horizon.

The first time she’d woke before him, she’d attempted to make breakfast and he’d stumbled almost blindly from her too small bed into the cozy kitchen where she was whisking eggs and frying vegetables for the perfect omelette while bacon sizzled and snapped nearby.

She’d almost burned the bacon and definitely burned the vegetables. He didn’t care so much about breakfast as he did the gesture of it being made for him, and showed his appreciation in very distracting ways. She yelled at him for that though, because she’s an excellent cook.

Today, months after that first time, she wakes first with time to spare. His breath is warm on her chest and he faces her, his arm draped limply over her hip. The shushing pulse of spectral lights under his skin is subdued. He is calm, comfortable. She’s learned to read him that way, knows how to see his unease, his irritation, his joy, to see the general state of his emotions through the fractal patterns under his skin.

She can’t help the small quirk of a smile that comes over her face as she gazes down at the top of a blue head, relaxed eyebrows, thick black lashes that rest against his cheeks. Her arm soothes a line up his bare back, the movement pushing him closer into the crook of her neck.

He huffs against her skin, a pointed breath that evened out as he settled, shifting against her, a wall of muscle seeking the warmth of her body. She slides her hand back down slowly, a gentle path down sinew and warm skin to the lowest notches of his vertebrae and back again. He sleeps on.

When her right hand travels up his back once more, it detours. Fingertips continue their trek up and over his occipital bone, dark eyes drinking in every detail of his slumbering body revealed above the blankets.

He is perfection made flesh. Hard planes and smooth skin that yield only to her, only like this. It’s a powerful feeling, being the Commander’s companion. Not that she desires power in the first place, but once in a while, it’s hard not to bask in the myriad of feelings he invokes in her.

She keeps her inspection purely physical. She will pay homage to his mind with her words later, matching him move for move at an expenditure meeting scheduled for this afternoon. They do not fight how they used to, but Traveler take them both, there is just something about their battles of wit that set them both ablaze.

The path her fingertips take bring them up and in front of her, stroking his left temple idly, thumb rising up to cup his cheek as it trails down and toward his neck. These little touches will begin to pull him toward wakefulness without being jarring. She’s mapped out his responses to different stimuli, desperate to give him a morning that does not start with the chime of a ghost or datapad, an alarm or an emergency. She wants him to wake slowly, comfortably and unhurried, pushed gently into wakefulness by gentle hands and soft kisses.

He doesn’t like gifts, he’s told her. He is a man of few needs, who finds his service - his devotion - to others a gift of itself. They’re the same in that way(she’s not all in on service like he is, but she boasted being low maintenance right up until she discovered how wonderful it was to wake up with a partner like him curled around her). So, for a man who takes care of others first, always before himself, she knows what gifts to give. He believes the little things in a relationship to be overlooked yet important, and she appreciates giving them to him whenever she can. He won’t let her bear his burdens without a fight, but she’s found other ways that invoke less of his wrath.

Their strange brand of give and take makes them good partners. Right now, she’s giving, and he’s taking. He’s not awake to argue.

By the time her lips drop to his forehead he’s shifting though his eyelids don’t crinkle or flutter, the crest in wakefulness leading him to seek further touch. He loves to be consoled, to be soothed and comforted. She won’t give away his secrets. What happens between them stays that way.

The arm draped over her shifts and pulls her in tight, hip to hip. Her eyes darken in molten desire that she wrangles back. She’s sure there will be time for that, but that’s not how she wants him to wake. There are other days, days when they have little time but surging urgency. Days when the nightmares bleed into wakefulness and intimacy is the anchor one or both of them need.

She slides her thumb down over the barely raised skin of one indigo-cerulean tattoo on his neck. He rolls onto his back, leaving her hand trailing across the bottom of his neck, across his chest and up to the twin tattoo on the right side of his neck.

With him in that position, she scoots closer, resting her right hand over his heart, gentle hand sliding across firm muscle. She leans up and nuzzles his neck before pressing silent kisses along his jawline. When he shifts, she soothes again, the hand over his heart trailing up to leave nonsensical lines down the far side of his face, cupping the side of his jaw she cannot reach to kiss.

He turns his head toward her, his arm sliding up her back sluggishly with none of his usual precision, though with his unconscious strength he could easily heave her on top of him. She presses the gentlest of kisses to the baby soft skin of his cheek, his hairless face always soft despite the blistering wind of the Tower. He lifts his chin to try and meet her lips, and only now does she see the movement of his eyes beneath closed lids, the faintest twitch of lashes. He’ll wake soon.

Fingers twitch against her back. She smiles against the skin of his shoulder and kisses where the muscle of his arm meets his chest. He rumbles low as he turns back, drawing her up against him with a purr.

Traveler take her. Zavala is fucking adorable when he’s asleep.

She almost giggles over it. Almost. How is this formidable man so damn cute? It’s criminal. She would know, being a recently reformed one, herself.

She nuzzles under his chin with a combination of her forehead and raven-colored hair, and he gives her mouth access to his neck. His shoulder rolls back as he opens himself up for the line of soft touches and line of kisses she drags down his trapezius muscle to the edge of his shoulder joint.

When his hold slackens enough, she leans and rolls onto her back. As if drawn to her, he follows, and she readjusts to let him finish waking the way she knows he likes best: head pillowed on her breast, listening to her heartbeat, left hand curled where hip bone meets belly.

Her left hand pulls the misplaced blankets up to his chin before stroking his neck and back, while her right traces idle paths over his hand.

The flutter of lids and lashes a few minutes later tells her that he’s awake, but he does not make a sound or move a muscle and his body remains heavy, his head and shoulders weighing down her torso. She realizes, after he lets his eyes flutter closed for a few moments and then opens them again, that he might think she’s asleep. But, there’s no way. She’s moving too much. She shifts, and his half-lidded eyes snap closed when she goes to peek down at him. It takes her a couple seconds to process this development. He’s pretending to be asleep.

That freaking dork.

She keeps stroking his back, controlling her breathing like a warrior knows how, so that an accelerating heartbeat won’t betray that she knows he’s playing possum. Well, she thinks to herself, mission accomplished. She’ll indulge him for a little while longer.


End file.
